Call This the High-Anxiety Ashes

Massive falls in work productivity, busy hospital cardiac wards, a spike in tranquilizer sales. Expect imminent reports of all of these things and more across England and Australia. In the fourth game, at Chester-le-Street in England's far north, the Ashes again served up another painfully close, constantly scintillating, endlessly back-and-forth encounter, and another fine result for England.

Twists and turns? We had a few. Almost as many, in fact, as in the incredible first Test at Lord's, which ended with a similar Australian run chase that fell just short.

At Chester-le-Street, first England was on top at 149-1 on the first day; then Australia knocked the hosts over for 238. England answered by reducing the visitors to 12-2 and 76-4 before Chris Rogers and Shane Watson combined for a 129-run partnership that put Australia's noses in front again. England's slump to 49-3 was rescued by Ian Bell's 113, but some quick wickets dragged Australia back into it. A nice contribution from the England tail meant that the hosts set a stiff target of 299.

But Australia seemed set to match it at 109-0 and 147-1. And then came the characteristic collapse. The visitors shipped nine wickets for 77 to lose by 74. The lead, in other words, changed hands at least seven times.

The result means that the series stands at 3-0 to England after four games. In a sense, that doesn't tell the true tale. England has dominated only one game in the series, and Australia has done the same. If the final evening of this match had gone slightly differently, Australia could be just 2-1 down and feeling confident of drawing the series in the final encounter, at The Oval. Apart from the weather that secured England a draw in the third Test, however, Australia has only itself to blame for the position it's in, because it has lost the ability to turn a promising position into a victory.

When David Warner and Rogers were calmly compiling a century opening stand at about four an over during the final-innings run-chase—with the world's best batsman, Michael Clarke, still to come—Australia looked to have the game in the bag. To implode so spectacularly from a winning position, having scrapped like tigers for almost four days, suggests a team that has forgotten how to win. And with no wins in its past eight games, that's not entirely surprising.

The upsetting thing for Australia is that its recent Achilles' heel, its batting, functioned so well for most of this game, with fine contributions from Rogers, Warner and Watson and the team still lost.

The game was played on a curious pitch. Low and slow, it was never easy for batsmen to score fast, but run-scoring was never impossible. There were several high scores, though no batsman was ever completely set.

There was very little spin, but Australia's underrated Nathan Lyon in particular got excellent results from bowling around the wicket and running the ball past the bat with the natural angle, finishing with match figures of 7-97. It didn't swing much, and the sporadic seam movement was unplayable one minute, nonexistent the next.

The one thing the pitch definitely had was variable bounce. With little pace in it, that meant pitching most balls up, bowling as straight as possible, and trying to bowl really, really fast. Only two men did this consistently: Australia's Ryan Harris and England's Stuart Broad.

Harris continues to be titanic, whacking the ball into a dead pitch and gaining alarming bounce. His delivery to dismiss Broad in the third innings, rising throat-high to smack the flailing batsman on the gloves and float to gully, was as good a bouncer as you'll see. Broad's irresistible spells have sometimes tended to be punctuated by a few too many resistible ones, but here he managed two crackers on the trot, firing the ball in full at sometimes startling speeds and gaining late movement; in this mood, he seems to take most of his wickets by force of will alone.

Beyond any individual performance, though, the most encouraging news for England is that it is 3-0 up without having been anywhere near its best for most of the series.

The form of its batting unit continues to be a concern, but England's top order doesn't need to worry too much about its frequent collapses in this series, because it seems Bell will bail it out every time. Bell has 500 runs in the series, more than 150 ahead of his nearest rival on either side, including three centuries. Here, again, he batted with matchless elegance, combining his usual full range of coaching-manual shots with what has become a steelier temperament and an impressive understanding of how to pace an innings. Bell will never be imposing in his demeanor but has quietly evolved into a batsman of titanic stature, with no obvious weakness.

This game might also have finally settled the question of whether Tim Bresnan is worth his place in the England side. Before this game, most pundits felt Graham Onions would present more of a threat, nibbling it around on his home ground. And there will doubtless be many who feel that Chris Tremlett's height and bounce may be better at The Oval.

Bresnan's misfortune is that he doesn't excite people. He tends to be regarded as a solid performer rather than a match-winner. Here, though, he made two telling interventions. First he pushed England's final-innings lead into genuinely daunting territory with an intelligently constructed innings of 45—full of caution and solidity while Bell was still at the crease and calculated aggression once he was out. Then Bresnan grabbed two vital wickets on the final day, including the critical one of Warner when Australia was well placed at 168-2, with Clarke at the other end. In three matches in this series, Bresnan has 103 runs at 25.75 and 10 wickets at 29.60. He has proved his point.

A tireless scrapper, Bresnan is the perfect emblem for this series, in which the two teams keep battering each other senseless without that much to separate them. England, though, keeps winning, and Australia keeps throwing away winning positions, and that turnaround, which has taken place within less than a decade, is indicative of where the respective teams are psychologically.

Australia has showed that it can go toe-to-toe with anyone. But it has also shown that it can lose from any position.

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